Ever been rejected by a dump? Happened to me the other day.

We're replacing the deck behind my house in Boise, so I tossed the old boards into the back of a truck and headed for the county landfill. On the way, I noticed a flashing red light in the driver's side mirror; because of the lumber, I couldn't see a thing in the rear-view mirror.

"License and registration, sir," said the policeman, who looked about 14.

"What's the problem, officer?" I wondered.

"Your load, sir," he said. "It's not covered."

I looked puzzled. "Well, yeah, I know that."

"A driver has to cover the load on a truck," he said. "State law."

I looked back at the bed of the truck.

"Are any of those boards a danger to anyone?" I asked.

"Doesn't matter," he policeman said. "An uncovered load is an uncovered load."

So I stuffed the citation into my shirt pocket and headed up the hill to the dump. Pulling up to the gate, I proclaimed, "Got a load of scrap wood here."

"No, you don't," the attendant replied coldly. "What you've got there is an uncovered load."

I pointed to the truck in the next lane, which was hauling bales of waste paper. The wind was howling, and bits and pieces of paper were blowing everywhere.

"Is that guy legal?" I asked the attendant.

"Yes, sir, he is," she said.

"But he's shedding his load all over the place," I said. "And I'm not."

The attendant pointed to wide plastic bands that were wrapped around each of the bales of paper.

"That's a secure load," she said. "You have nothing on your truck to contain the wood or to keep it in the bed, so it's an insecure load."

"So, you're rejecting me?" I said, my lip quavering a little.

"Yes, sir," she said. "You're so rejected."

Of course, then I had to drive home and tell my wife that they wouldn't let me into the dump.

"How is that even possible?" Victoria said. "It's not a bank. It's not Harvard. It's not a Hollywood party. It's a landfill."

The truck - which was borrowed - languished in my driveway. I couldn't drive it, or I'd get another ticket. And I couldn't dump the lumber, because no one would take the load.

So I unloaded the boards at the same spot on the patio where I'd been collecting them, called a friend who's in the landscaping business, and explained my problem.

A few minutes later Jason pulled up in front of my house with a portable tree shredder in tow behind his truck. Within five minutes, we were ready to start feeding that wood into the shredder.

"Just a minute," Jason said. "Are there rusty nails in that lumber?"

"Sure," I said. "It used to be a deck."

"Then I can't help you," he said. "Those nails will chew up my shredder."

So now all that scrap wood is stacked into something that vaguely resembles abstract art. Or it did until I accidentally backed over it with my wife's car, flattening a tire on the rusty nails.

Still, that lumber should make good fuel for a bonfire. That'll come in handy since I'll be sleeping on the patio for awhile.

Steve Crump may be reached at 735-3223, or scrump@magicvalley.com.